College students who are looking to score in top levels must restrain from smoking marijuana and consuming alcohol, as a study finds that medium-to-high consumption of both substances is linked to poor academic performance.
The findings suggested that despite no differences in pre-college scores, the students who were medium-to-high users of both substances not only had a lower predicted college GPA on average by the end of the first semester, but continued to achieve lower GPAs throughout the two years of the study.
The research, published in the journal of PLOS ONE, states that college students who consume medium-to-high levels of alcohol and marijuana have a consistently lower GPA.
Alcohol and marijuana are the two most abused substances in US colleges, but little is known about the effect of consuming both on students' academic performance.
Lead study author Shashwath Meda from Hartford Hospital/Institute of Living in the USA and his colleagues examined the association between college students' alcohol and marijuana consumption and their grade point average (GPA) in each semester.
"Doing a lot of both drugs had a significant impact, in terms of lower grades in our study and in other studies, with number of leaves of absences and those who dropped out of school," said senior study author Godfrey Pearlson.
They tracked 1,142 students for two years after they began college and using self-reported data they clustered them into groups of low users or medium-to-high users of alcohol or both substances.
Those students who consumed medium-to-high levels of alcohol but little marijuana started out with a lower predicted GPA, but there was no difference compared to low users at the end of the study.
The researchers' further suggested that some students decreased their substance use over time, and their GPA increased relative to their peers who remained consistent in their drug use patterns.
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